…is that they have brittle branches that snap easily. By comparison, my thornless honey locust tree was badly damaged by high wind, and later struck by lightning, yet it never dropped anything larger than a twig. After a strong thunderstorm Tuesday evening (July 8th), we saw this mass of silvery leaves in our garden.

maple branch in the fourth garden bed

The branch came from high on the other side of my neighbor’s maple tree. It was about six inches (15 cm) in diameter where it broke and about thirty feet (9 m) long. The trunk end struck my A-frame trellis a glancing blow and wedged itself between the trellis and an electric fence post that supports the fence that keeps rabbits away from my beans.

maple branch wedged between trellis and post

The other end came down on my peppers and eggplants. My daughter helped me cut off and remove the smaller branches so that I could move the large branch off the two garden beds. I cut it into smaller pieces later.

mangled cages after I removed branches and moved the main branch off the garden bed

The branch mostly missed my tomatoes, just bending one tomato cage. Some plants lost branches, and one pepper was broken off near the ground. The peas and pole beans that grow on the trellis, and the trellis itself, all seem to be OK. The commercial tomato cages that I use with the peppers and eggplants were pretty badly bent and mangled. The steel that they’re made from is rather soft and malleable, though, so I was able to restore them to an approximation of their original shape.